Joe,
You wrote about the "approved" paths to knowledge: "The problem comes with the way we are made slaves to accredited and state sanctioned forms of gaining knowledge." Jeazus!!! Glory -- slap me silly -- I have found a brother!
Ya know, Joe, I was gettin' a little drifty on you with the political stuff. I'm not a great fan of unrestrained anarcho-capitalism, but the 180 degree swing that you frequently espouse doesn't appeal a great deal to me either. From my point of view, I like private property. I like the notion that a person who works hard gets rewarded beyond the slothful wretch who just gets through the day. I just think the cult of individual reward has gone through the ole buffet line a few too many times here in present-day 'merica. All that fell away when I read your email concerning education.
You've got it, brother -- lock, stock and barrel.
Simple world view: God gave us everything we need to form a healthy and sustainable civilization. It's up to everybody born to this Earth to find a place at the rock and help push it up the hill.
There are a helluva lot of folks who spend their lives figuring out how to survive without laying hands on the rock. University folks are frequently among these. Now, I've known professors and administrators who took their jobs very seriously and used them as daily avenues for worldly progress, but I've also known an ass-full of pompous gas bags who were using the American education system as a safe harbor from the nasty realities of day-to-day life. Their dead-weight presence on "the rock" makes education more difficult by increasing the expenses and increasing the distractions for the students who can still afford to go.
Fifteen years ago, I left a graduate program because I just couldn't stand to be around these assholes or because I was drunk all the time -- I really can't recall. But I do recall saying to my students that if they all came to the class throughout the semester and worked independently and in small groups on writing papers, seeking out help when they needed guidance, they would probably learn a great deal more than they would by sitting in those same desks, listening to me and having me mark up their papers in red ink. I remain convinced of this. The American education system is destroying the independence and personal fire needed to fuel real learning and is replacing it with a system of defined hoops and hurdles to be rewarded with outwardly meaningful (but spiritually bereft) merit badges.
In the process, we shelter a group of turds and foster only dependence in our young folks.
And you wrote: "Once the basic reading skills are mastered, anything can be learned with self-application and the will to do so."
God, yes! Thank you. Somebody else sees it!
Happy days, Joe. You've done my heart a world of good. Now if we can just reform the American tax code to a simple progressive tax (you make this much, you pay this much ... you make that much, you pay that much) and fire the IRS and put Jackson-Hewitt and H&R Block out of business, we'd have another camp of shiftless n'er do wells who'd have to find a real way through life. Somewhere down the line, we can go to work on the lawyers and HR departments around the country. Most of those folks would really be much more productive growing marijuana in their backyards or staffing a chain of brothels.
Of course, there are those who might say that about me as well -- except the brothel part.
To the rock!!
Jeff
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Jeff,
Hoo yes! You've said it all better than I did.
Ya know, I have as hard a time as anyone else in defining and clarifying things because I am also a product of our system. For me it's like streeeetching to peer over a wall of conditioning just to see the obvious.
As to private property, I am not so much against it as I am against anyone having too damned much of it -- or so much of it that other people must supplicate themselves before the state sanctioned material and intellectual owning and granting class just to get the basics. A guy or gal ought to be able to own a reasonably sized home and a small local business, maybe in the old European tradition, or in the Third World way for that matter, without too much grief and interference by the state or anyone else. I like the idea of life as a series of linked villages and productive interrelated communities better than I like states and super-states of any kind. That's why I am so attracted to Central America and places like it. Life is what it appears to be and is reasonably easy to deal with -- not to mention edifying as you go along in daily life.
Like I said, I don't make things clear enough I guess. To me, life is kind of a murky thing. But as I get older, it seems to be clearing up a little, so maybe the writing will become clearer. Hope so.
In art and labor,
Joe
